Dear all,
My name is Desmond McCarthy (Project Assistant) from the
Medicinal Plants Conservation Project (MPCP-Egypt) and we have just
launched our new website detailing all our work both locally in South
Sinai and Nationally. I would be grateful if you could view our website
and give me some feedback. If you have a website in keeping with our
themes and goals then please contact me so that we may establish a link
together.

A Project Concept to integrate with the WADI Programme for Tribal
Livelihoods
A Concept Note

BAIF Development Research Foundation is a Non-Government Organisation
working for rural development across seven states of India. Registered
as a Public Charitable Trust in 1967, BAIF is today managed by over 1000
dedicated professionals, implementing a multi-disciplinary programme in
Livestock Development, Water resource Development, Tree Based Farming
Systems, Community Health and Empowerment of Village Communities,
especially women, spread over 10,000 villages.

THE BAIF MISSION

BAIF’s Mission is to create opportunities of gainful self employment for
the rural families especially disadvantaged sections, ensuring
sustainable livelihood, enriched environment, improved quality of life
and good human values. This is being achieved through development
research, effective use of local resources, extension of appropriate
technologies and upgradation of skills and capabilities with community
participation. BAIF is a non-political, secular and professionally
managed organisation.

The Maharashtra Programme

BAIF, through its Associate Organisation MITTRA, has taken up the Wadi
programme for tribal livelihood promotion. This is done through a
holistic approach incorporating horticulture, agriculture development,
management of natural resources and introducing off-farm activities to
add value to the farm produce. The programme also has interventions for
improving the quality of living through improved health and creating
development opportunities for women. The programme is implemented in
over 325 tribal villages from Nashik, Thane and Ahmednagar districts of
Maharashtra State. In these areas programmes reach out to about 20,000
families. The programme has now also been initiated in other areas such
as Nandurbar and parts of Vidarbha.

The above programmes are implemented in exclusive tribal areas where the
families do not have year-round livelihood opportunities, and are forced
to migrate for survival. The Wadi programme has made possible for them
to have a secure and stable livelihood.

HERBOTECHNIK: A UNIQUE STRATEGY

A new programme direction is now launched by BAIF in selected areas, to
understand, conserve, cultivate and utilise medicinal herbs. The
Herbotechnik approach has the following cornerstones:

 Help sustain the traditional knowledge systems on medicinal herbs, in
a living form
 Promote availability of medicinal herbs in all their diversity
 Integrate use of herbal medicines in the community health programme
 Commercialisation with benefits to the local communities who have
contributed to the knowledge.

Proposed Programme

It is planned to integrate the Herbotechnik strategy with the ongoing
Wadi Programme. In order to have a people based programme for production
and forward linkages, BAIF / MITTRA have started to work with the
traditional herbal healers and other tribal farmers in order to take up
production / procurement, cleaning, value addition and marketing of
medicinal herbs and semi processed products. As a step in this
direction, the following is planned to be undertaken:

Moulay Ismail University, Faculty of Sciences and Techniques Errachidia,
UFR Physiology of Nutrition and Endocrinian Pharmacology and Laboratory
of Protection and Preservation of Natural Resources are jointly
organizing the International Congress on Medicinal Plants which will
take place in Errachidia, Morocco from 16th to 19th March 2005.

The objectives of the congress are as under:-

- Developing collaboration between scientific researchers in the field
of medicinal plants and natural products
- Updating informaton and techniques used in the study of
pharmacological activities of medicinal plants
- Preservation of traditional knowledge in phytotherapy
- Debate problems and solutions related to different aspects of the
phytotherapy
- Contributing to development of Moroccan Industry dealing with natural
products

Important dates:-

Deadline for abstracts submission: 10th January 2005
Deadline for full length papers submission: 10th February 2005